The Rules of the Game
by CharlesTheBold
Summary: The 74th Hunger Games, from Seneca Crane's point of view.


**The Rules of the Games**

_(Disclaimer: I have no business connection with HUNGER GAMES. My only purpose in writing this story is to have fun and maybe share it)_

Being the Head Gamesmaster had its perks, Seneca reflected. Among other things, it made one very attractive to the ladies. (The beard helped, too). Around the start of the 74th Hunger Games, Seneca also embarked on a relationship with a woman named Cressida, who worked in the division involved with editing the feed from the Hunger Games cameras. It was possible, of course, that Cressie was angling for some sort of promotion. But that sort of side-motivation was common in the Capitol hierarchy; you just had to be subtle about it, and Cressie was.

Normally they had the nights available to themselves: after the first few days, the tributes learnt the need for sleeping and conserving their energy at night, particularly since the lack of artificial illumination made any other activities difficult. However, Seneca was late one night. He thought Cressie would be annoyed, but she was impressed when he explained that he had had a meeting with President Snow.

"The President was anxious, he's very adamant that the girl from District 12 not win the games," he explained. "Not winning" implied that she would have to die very soon, but Seneca was fastidious and rarely said such things directly.

"You nearly did her in with that fire, didn't you?" asked Cressie. "Why don't you try again?"

"Well, there are rules in these Games," Seneca explained. "We can't target a single tribute. People bet on the Tributes because they think the protégée can defeat the others and evade the ordinary hazards of the arena. Special treatment for somebody distorts the odds, and the bettors will feel cheated. The official purpose of the fire was to force all the Tributes, not just that girl, to avoid isolated areas of the arena."

"What about Clove and Cato?" she asked. "He's good with a sword, she's good with knives, and they're teamed up. One of them should be able to do in the 'Girl on Fire' ".

"Earlier in the Games, yes. But my spies tell me that the Careers are trained to follow a certain strategy. Stay allied until the number of Tributes goes below a certain point, then they're free to turn on each other. Right now there are 6 Tributes left - the two from 1, the two from 12, the girl from 5, the boy from 11. One more death would probably trigger the breakup, and then the Careers will be a lot more worried with each other than with that damned girl from 12."

"How about making sure they don't break up?" asked Cressie.

"What do you mean?"

"Announce that two people can win if they're from the same district. Then Cato and Clove will have no reason to fight each other."

"The President will never go for a rule change like that."

"Even if it'll get rid of the Girl on Fire?"

"Hmmm".

Seneca proposed the change to the President the next day, and was surprised at how avidly Snow leapt at the idea. That was when Seneca realized just how much Snow wanted to be rid of the girl from 12. And so the next day he had Templesmith make the announcement, heard by everybody in the arena and across all Panem. He did not hint that the idea had come from his girlfriend in bed. Nor did he worry too much about the possibility that the rule change might also benefit the pair from 12. She'd be killed, and the already-wounded boyfriend would scarcely survive on his own.

A few days later, though, Seneca was fretting again to Cressie.

"She's still alive, and the viewers are getting bored with the lack of action. All 6 still alive, and hiding in various places."

"Well, the love scenes are interesting," said Cressie. "Even though we have to censor out a lot of the stuff that Cato and Clove are doing with each other. Too bad the boy from 12 is too sick to make love with the girl."

"The Hunger Games are not supposed to be about love! We need to lure her out of her hiding place, and encourage Cato and Clove to go after her."

"Maybe you should give them an offer they can't refuse."

"Hmm, interesting phrase there. Where did you pick it up?"

"Some old archive."

"Give the girl an offer she can't refuse? I suppose the only thing that would do that is medicine for her boyfriend. Then they'd actually be in the running for the joint award."

"Not of you make sure that Cato and Clove show up and take care of her. Give them something tempting as well. And that boy from 11, maybe he'll do her in if they don't. "

"Hmmm."

So Seneca proposed the new suggestion to the President. Snow agreed again, but more warily this time. "The longer she survives, the more heroic she seems to the public. That's not the sort of hero we want to promote. The true hero is the one who fights the other districts. But they'll forget, once she's out of the way."

At their next assignation, Seneca was very late.

"Who would have thought that the boy would just hang back and let his girl handle that bitch alone?" he fumed. "And that the boy from 11 would pass up the opportunity to kill a competitor?"

"People can be quirky," admitted Cressie.

"Right. Maybe we shouldn't rely on people. We've got some wolf-style muttations almost ready. The catch is, we'll have to make sure they stay under our control. If they kill EVERYBODY, we'd have no Victor, and that's definitely not in the Rules of the Game. It happened a few years ago, that the Victor committed suicide by overdosing on morphling medicine. No parties, no Victory Tour."

"And no Head Gamesmistress," said Cressie. "Didn't the President have her executed?"

"Yes. But don't worry, I'm not going to make the same mistake."

Starting the next day, Seneca had the biologists work on the muttations. Meanwhile Cato killed the boy from 11, and the girl from 5 accidentally poisoned herself. That eliminated two possible variables. It was down to Cato and the pair from 12.

Seneca thought it through carefully. Although boy from 12 had been healed – the biologists had felt honor-bound to give him the best possible medicine – he would be of little use in a fight. It would be down to Cato and the girl, and in hand-to-hand combat he was the most likely to win. All he had to do was throw her to the mutations.

He ran it by the President, who suggested a modification. The muttations mustn't just kill the victim, they must make her suffer first, gnawing on less important parts of the body. Snow really loathed the girl from 12 by this time.

"What about the double-victor rule?" asked Seneca.

"I've written a decree cancelling it. But no need to publicize it as yet. We don't want to appear wishy-washy, changing our minds all the time. Once the girl dies, there's no possibility of a double victor. That gives a year to make the announcement of the cancellation, so that the double-victor rule won't apply to the next Games."

Two days later, Seneca watched in dismay as his plans fell apart. First, the boy from 12 DID put up a fight. Not enough to win, but enough for the girl to retreat a safe distance. Then Cato suddenly started babbling about how he and Clove and the others had been used as tools for years, to entertain the Capitol and protect the others of District 1 from being reaped. Seneca would have to censor that from the tapes before the Career's-in-training heard it, but he had more immediate problems. By the time Cato regained his nerve, the archer girl had managed to aim an arrow carefully. When she shot it, it missed her boyfriend and hit Cato a glancing blow, enough to knock him off balance and among the muttations. The agonizing death that Snow had planned for the girl now threatened Cato instead, and his competitors from 12 actually sacrificed their last arrow to put him out of his misery.

"Where's Templesmith?" yelled Seneca.

"I'm here," said the announcer, stepping out from the back of the control room. "Should I announce the two Victors?"

"NO! Read this!" Seneca took out the President's cancellation decree, wrote an opening sentence on the paper and thrust it in Templesmith's face. The announcer's eyes bugged out more than usual, but he read the decree. "GREETINGS TO THE FINAL CONTESTANTS OF THE SEVENTY-FOURTH HUNGER GAMES. THE EARLIER REVISION HAS BEEN REVOKED. EXAMINATION OF THE RULE BOOK HAS DISCLOSED THAT ONLY ONE VICTOR MAY BE ALLOWED." On his own, Templesmith added by habit: "GOOD LUCK AND MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOR."

Seneca looked at the screen and felt considerable _shadenfreude_ as the implications dawned on the two Tributes. They would have to have a final fight, one of the killing the other, or they would stay in the arena until they starved. This was still a win-win situation for Seneca. If the boy killed the girl, they were finally rid of her. If the girl killed the boy, which was more likely, she would be the Victor, but she would have the stigma of having killed her lover, which would take the edge off of her heroic reputation. Snow would probably have him rerun the killing over and over, under the pretext of celebrating her victory.

"Go ahead, do it," said the boy, pointing at the bow. "One of us should return home. They have to have a victor."

To Seneca's surprise, at least two of his technicians started sobbing.

"No they don't," declared the girl. She threw down the now-famous bow and rummaged in her pocket, drawing out the poison berries dropped by the girl from 5.

"No!" said the boy.

"Trust me," she said. She handed half the berries to the boy. "On the count of three?"

It was something unprecedented: a suicide pact of the two survivors. And it was Seneca's worst nightmare: another games without a Victor, something which could get the Gamesmaster executed.

"Stop them!" Seneca yelled at Templesmith. "Tell them they can both be victors!"

"STOP! STOP! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I AM PLEASED TO PRESENT THE VICTORS OF THE SEVENTY-FOURTH HUNGER GAMES, KATNISS EVERDEEN AND PEETA MALLARK. I GIVE YOU THE TRIBUTES OF DISTRICT TWELVE!" Templesmith switched off the microphone. "What the HELL is going on?"

Seneca was too busy trying to salvage the situation in his head to answer. The two needed medical treatment; he had noticed that the girl seemed to have lost the hearing in one ear. Maybe she could die under treatment and they'd be rid of her that way.

But before he could verbalize the thought, he received a message from the President, depriving him of his post and inviting him to dinner.

0-0-0-0

At the end of an epoch-making day, Cressida met with two men: Plutarch Heavensbee, one of the Gamesmasters, and Caesar Flickerman, TV interviewer.

"I did it," said Cressida. "I kept Seneca from killing Katniss several times, though it wouldn't have worked if the girl herself hadn't been so resourceful. And since Seneca kept his love life private and didn't give me credit for 'his' ideas, nobody suspects I was involved."

"Good work, Cressida," said Plutarch. "Though I'm sorry you had to consort with him."

"Don't worry. He WAS good in bed, and I'm not an idealist on the subject of sex. The important thing is, now we have a new kind of hero. Somebody who became heroic not by killing her competitors, but by defying the Rules of the Games. Being willing to sacrifice herself for her sister, for Rue, for Peeta. Everybody knows now, that Snow tried to go back on his word, and a 'mere' peasant girl called him on it."

"For me, this is a dream come true," said Caesar. He still looked like a clown, with dyed hair and heavy makeup, but his face was filled with true joy. "For years I've been trying to get the audience to feel for the Tributes, and failed. But two kids from an obscure District, and that crazy mentor of theirs, turned the trick. I don't think the Capitol people will be so callous about the Games again."

"Do you think we'll have Games again?" asked Cressida.

"I'm afraid so," said Plutarch. "Snow will insist on it. They've already offered me the position of the next Head Gamesmaster. But I think it will have much less popular support next year. Maybe, next time, we will be the ones to write the Rules of the Game."

THE END

_(NOTE: The notion that Caesar was a secret rebel trying to raise sympathy for the Tributes is from a previous story I wrote, THOSE ABOUT TO DIE. The idea that the Careers are trained to maintain their alliance until the number of Tributes drops below an agreed-upon value, is from another story, ESPRIT DE CORPSE)_

_(NOTE: This is based on a mixture of the book and movie. Seneca is from the movie, but I departed from the implication that Heymitch suggested the double-victor rule to him)._


End file.
